Scientific Advisory Board

Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath
Chairperson, Center for Neuroscience, IISC, Bangalore

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath earned her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Andhra University and PhD (Biochemistry) in 1981 from Mysore University while working at the Central Food Technology Research Institute (CFTRI). She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Cancer Institute, USA (1982-85) and joined the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) at Bangalore upon returning to India. She continued working in various capacities at NIMHANS till 2000 when she took over as the Founder Director of National Brain Research Center (NBRC), an autonomous institute of the Department of Biotechnology. She continued as Director till April 2009, when she returned to Bangalore as Professor and Chair of the newly created Center for Neuroscience at IISc. Professor Ravindranath has won many prestigious awards like SS Bhatnagar Award for Medical Sciences (1996); KP Bhargava Medal of Indian National Science Academy (2001); Om Prakash Bhasin Award for Science & Technology (2001); and Stree Shakti Award. She is the Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (India), Allahabad; Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore; and Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). She received the prestigious Padmashri award in 2010.
Dr. Vijay Chandru
Co-Founder, Chairman & CEO, Strand Life Sciences, Bangalore

Dr. Vijay Chandru

Dr. Vijay Chandru (Ph.D., MIT 1982) is an academic entrepreneur recognized as the ‘Technology Pioneer’ by the World Economic Forum in 2006. His academic career has spanned over two decades at Purdue University and the Indian Institute of Science. Dr. Chandru is the recipient of several awards and honors: Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences (1996), MCIT Dewang Mehta Award for Innovation in IT (2001), UGC Hari Om Trust award for ‘Science and Society’ (2003), the President’s Medal of INFORMS in 2006, distinguished Alumni award by the MIT India Program in 2007, and was recognized as the Biospectrum Biotech Entrepreneur of 2007. He was the elected President (2009-2012) of the Association of Biotech Led Enterprises (ABLE), the apex trade body that represents the Indian biotech industry.
Mr. Shrikumar Suryanarayan
Chairman & Co- Founder, Sea6 Energy Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore

Mr. Shrikumar Suryanarayan

Mr. Suryanarayan is the Chairman and co-founder of Sea6 Energy Pvt. Ltd. He was formerly the President of Research and Development at Biocon Limited, Bangalore India and the Chief Scientific Advisor to the company. He was associated with Biocon for over 25 years. He served as the Chief Executive Officer for the Translational Health Sciences Institute at the National Capital Region Biosciences Cluster, Government of India from 2009-2010. His other appointments include an Honorary Adjunct Professorship at the Department of Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He is also a member of the Executive Council of the Association of Biotechnology Led Enterprises of India (ABLE), headquartered at Bangalore. In 2009, he received the “Distinguished Alumnus Award” of the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
Dr. Dhirendra Bahadur
Institute Chair Professor at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science at IIT, Bombay

Dr. Dhirendra Bahadur

Dr. Dhirendra Bahadur is at present an institute Chair Professor at the Department of Metallurgical Engineering and Materials Science at IIT, Bombay, India. He served at various capacities at IIT, Kanpur and IIT, Bombay between 1978 and now. He was a visiting fellow of the Royal Society London – INSA exchange program and worked at Cavendish Laboratory from 1985-86. He was also visiting scientist at, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada between 1987 and 1988 and a guest scientist at Forshungzentrum Juelich, Germany several times between 1995 and 2002. During the period of 2006-2007 he was at, ICMCB, Bordeaux, France and served as Associate Director, Research. Professor Bahadur’s present research interests are in the area of nanostructured oxide materials, their hybrids, grapheme and its composites, magnetic materials at a nano scale and their applications particularly in cancer theranostics, drug stabilization and targeted delivery, water purification, photocatalysis and sensing. Professor Bahadur has organized several international conferences. Some of these are “International Symposium on Recent Advances in Inorganic Materials” in 2002 and “Indo-Singapore Symposium on Advanced Functional Materials” in 2006. He organized an International Conference on Nano Science and Nano Technology (ICONSAT 2010) in Feb, 2010. The selected papers presented during this conference have been published in International Journal of Nanoscience, 2011, for which Prof. Bahadur is an editor. Professor Bahadur was a theme editor of a special issue on Hybrid Nanostructures for diagnostics and therapeutics of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews published by Elsevier in Nov, 2011.
Dr. Daniel Zurr
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Quark Pharmaceuticals Incorporated

Dr. Daniel Zurr

Dr. Daniel Zurr Ph.D., is the CEO, Founder and Chairman of Quark Pharmaceuticals Inc. and the former President of Plantex Ikapharm (currently part of the Teva Group). Dr. Daniel Zurr founded Quark Pharmaceuticals Inc. in 1993 and is currently Chairman & CEO of this company. Dr. Zurr also currently serves as a Director of QBI. Dr. Zurr has vast experience in senior research and business management in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Prior to establishing QBI, Dr. Zurr was the CEO of Plantex-Ikapharm, then the second largest pharmaceutical company in Israel with more than 300 employees and marketing offices in the United States, Europe and Japan, focused in the field of bulk active ingredients and finished dosage pharmaceuticals. Plantex Ikapharm, now part of the Teva group of companies, was the first Israeli company to be inspected and approved by the FDA, during Dr. Zurr’s tenure. In the early eighties, Dr. Zurr served as the Director of Licensing at G.D. Searle in Skokie, Illinois, where he was responsible for the major collaborative agreement between G.D. Searle and Meiji Seika Kaisha (Tokyo), involving the licensing of several drugs and recombinant DNA technology transfer, and numerous other agreements including those with Bayer AG (Leverkusen), Ono Pharmaceutical (Osaka) and May and Baker (London). Dr. Zurr received his M.Sc. at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his Ph.D. from the Imperial College University of London under the guidance of the Nobel Laureate Professor D.H.R. Barton.
Dr. M K Bhan
Former Secretary to the Government of India, DBT, Ministry of Science & Technology, New Delhi

Dr. M K Bhan

Dr. Bhan has played a leadership role in promoting primary healthcare for children in rural India during the last two decades. His main endeavor has been to bring the fruitfulness of science and technology to national programs for children. He has provided advocacy and leadership to many programs in India including promotion of oral rehydration therapy, micronutrient supplementation, introduction of new vaccines and greater coverage with existing ones. The IMNCI integrated program developed under his Chairmanship is being introduced in the reproductive child health program of the Government of India. This strategy will play a key role in reducing infant mortality in India. Dr. Bhan has provided leadership to the National Diarrheal Disease Control program which has resulted in reducing Diarrheal death from nearly 1.2 million per year to 6,00,000 per year. He has trained thousands of primary health worker and doctors in oral rehydration. Dr. Bhan created an operational strategy for micro nutrient supplementation in India. He has been a cementing force in bringing stakeholders together for the cause of child health in India.
Dr. Bala S. Manian
Chief Executive Officer & Founder, ReaMetrix Inc., USA

Dr. Bala S. Manian

Dr. Bala S. Manian, Ph.D., is the Founder of ReaMetrix Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman. Dr. Manian serves as the Chief Executive Officer of ReaMetrix India Pvt Ltd. Dr. Manian Co-Founded Entigen Corp. and served as its Chairman. In 1991, Dr. Manian founded Biometric Imaging Inc. and served as its Chairman of Board from 1991 to February 1999. Dr. Manian served as a Board Advisor of PixSense Inc. He served as the Chairman of Lumisys Inc., which he founded in 1987 (acquired by Eastman Kodak) since November 1998, and also the Chairman of Digital Optics Corp., which he founded in 1980 (acquired by Matrix Corp. in 1984). Additionally, he has founded/co-founded the following companies: Quantum Dot, Surromed Corp., and Molecular Dynamics (founded in 1987, and acquired by Amersham Pharmacia Biotech). Dr. Manian serves as a Director of IKP Knowledge Park. He serves as a Director of IKP Investment Management Company. Dr. Manian serves as a Member of Advisory Board at 2i Capital (India) Private Limited and Mitra Biotech Pvt Ltd. Dr. Manian served as a Member of Scientific Advisory Board at Manipal Acunova Limited. He serves as a Director of Vaccinex Inc. and of Embrace Innovations. He has been a Director of Biocon Limited since October 20, 2004. He served as a Director of PPD Biomarker Discovery Sciences, LLC. He served as a Director of Lumisys Inc. since October 1998. He serves as the Chairman of EPPIC and Trustee at the University of Rochester. An expert in the design of electro-optical systems, Dr. Manian has 30 years of optical systems industry experience, holds more than 30 patents, and has authored more than 35 scientific publications.  
Dr. Ashok Venkitaraman
Professor, The Ursula Zoellner Professor of Cancer Research, University of Cambridge

Dr. Ashok Venkitaraman

Dr. Venkitaraman is the Ursula Zoellner Professor of Cancer Research at the University of Cambridge, and the Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cancer Cell Unit at the Hutchison/MRC Research Centre. He is a Collaborative Science Chair at inStem and NCBS, Bangalore, and coordinates the Center for Chemical Biology and Therapeutics there. Ashok is internationally recognized for his research on the molecular mechanisms that preserve chromosome structure and number during cell division, and how defects in these mechanisms cause human cancer. His discoveries shed light on how chromosomal instability contributes to human cancer, provide scientific foundations underpinning new approaches to therapy, and reveal new insights into the fundamental mechanisms that repair, duplicate and segregate DNA when cells division occurs. Translation of these discoveries to clinical application is a major focus of Dr. Venkitaraman’s ongoing work. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, London, in 2001, and as a member of the EMBO European academy, Heidelberg, in 2004.